do 



OSWEGO : 



An Historical 
Address <m <m 



GEORGE T. CLARK 




Class )r 12-3 

Book .OlC 5 



OSWEGO 



An Historical 
address & jt- 



e^f 



DELIVERED JULY 15, 1896, AT THE CENTENNL4L CELEBRATION 
OF THE EVACUATION BY THE BRITISH OF FORT ONTARIO, 
OSWEGO, NEW YORK, AND THEIR SURRENDER OF THE 
MILITARY POSTS OF THE NORTHERN FRONTIER TO THE 
UNITED STATES 



*£& 



>f- 



GEORGE Tv^LARK 



OnC<r 



OSWEGO: 

AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 



The event in the history of the country commemo- 
rated here to-day well merits the marked attention it 
receives. The presence of these distinguished guests, 
the cessation of our customary employments, this pro- 
cession of soldiery and citizens, the oration of a famous 
orator, accord with the significance of the occasion. 
This old town, endeared to its citizens for its native 
charms and for the cherished memories and associations 
of family and friends, happy at welcoming within its 
walls to-day this great company who is come hither to 
honor its notable career, has a horizon in history far 
wider than the compass of yonder lake or yonder shore. 

The place and time suggest to every thoughtful mind 
occurrences and scenes not easily surpassed for substan- 
tial importance and striking effect. Here, in a primeval 
forest, long ago, an old world's civilization met with a 
new world's savagery, until the one, paling before the 
presence of the other, dwindled and like a spirit has 
passed away. Here people of different races, hostile by 
long tradition, came across the sea and found fresh cause 
of strife for supremacy. Here passed to and fro the 
earliest emissaries of the cross, bringing to barbaric 
tribes the hope of the new faith. Here, as well as else- 
where, were the little beginnings of the great trade and 
business of the land whose vast life now dominates its 



career. And here, too, a hundred years ago a new ship 
of state slipped her last cable, and, steering an unknown 
course, swept forth upon the main. 

To rightfully perform the office allotted to me, to 
properly connect this occasion with the great lines of 
history, to acceptably tell the story of Oswego, is as far 
beyond the limits of my time as it is beyond the limits 
of my abilities. 

We celebrate to-day the surrender to the United 
States of the military posts of the northern frontier. 
We commemorate the final departure from this fortifi- 
cation of English troops, and the end of England's rule 
over territory of the United States. 

This was in 1796. What were the causes? How 
came it that, thirteen years after articles of peace and 
twenty years after independence was declared, England 
held and would not yield this place, still in the virgin 
forest, and fronting this distant lake? What the loca- 
tion, what its importance, and what its history, that she 
should care for it? 

The new nation was more than a decade old; York- 
town was long since fallen and Cornwallis' sword sur- 
rendered, at hearing which Lord North had cried out in 
despair, -It is all over!" In 1782 Charleston and 
Savannah were evacuated. Peace was made in 1783 
and November 25, 1783, the British troops sailed 
from New York. The Continental soldiers were long 
since familiar heroes, and the stories of Lexington, and 
Saratoga, and Valley Forge, already twice-told tales at 
many a hearthstone. Long since had Washington writ- 
ten to Lafayette, now gone home and soon to light the 
fires of liberty on the altars of France: "Envious of 



none, I am determined to be pleased with all; and this* 
my dear friend, being the order of my march, I will 
move gently down the stream of life until 1 sleep with 
my fathers." But ere he slept, obeying the voice of the 
people as the voice of God, he quitted Mt, Vernon, his 
quiet harbor on the Potomac, to encounter the storms 
of the Chief Magistracy. When Oswego was yielded 
by the British, his matchless career was well-nigh over. 
Long since had the feeble articles of confederation of 
the disunited states been exchanged for the constitu- 
tion of the states united. The long wait for North 
Carolina and Rhode Island to come in was over. The 
Northwest territory had been ceded to the general gov- 
ernment. Hamilton had "struck the rock of national 
resources, and abundant streams gushed forth ; had 
touched the dead corpse of public credit, and it had 
sprung upon its feet." Universal peace had been made 
with Indian tribes; the infant nation had already put 
down one insurrection. It stood upon its feet, stalwart, 
facing the world. And yet, in 1706 the banner of 
Great Britain still flew within the boundaries of the 
United States, over the posts of Ogdensburg, Oswego, 
Niagara, Erie, Sandusky, Mackinaw, and Detroit. 

The cause of this anomaly is not found in the history 
of a broken treaty alone. Such a rehearsal might indi- 
cate the proximate cause tor England's retention of this 
fort, but the root of the matter lies in deeper and richer 
soil. 

In the last resort, the important, part for which 
Oswego was cast in the history of the country, and I 
may say in the history of two continents, during the 
eighteenth century, fell to it because of its native, its 



6 

original gifts. These are no less dominant in the 
career of principalities and towns than in the career 
of the individual. Like the mental and moral equip- 
ment of a man, the physical and geographical equipment 
of a nation or a town are a predominating factor in its 
fate, infiltrating all the stream of life, ameliorating mis- 
fortune, rendering success more successful, and getting 
the most from opportunity. 

The career of Oswego is accounted for chiefly by its 
location. So it has been, and so it will continue to be. 
Even now the same native force of her location which had 
free scope in the eighteenth century is heard to move as 
if to bring forth in the twentieth. 

But in the eighteenth century the land was a wilder- 
ness; the mysterious, the well-nigh impenetrable forest 
was everywhere, tree upon tree, thicket upon thicket, 
rock upon rock. Who can describe it? — its gloom, its 
grandeur, its depths, its awfulness. There the sun seldom 
struck its beams. There were the haunts of wild beasts, 
the bear, the wolf, the wildcat. There, the only high- 
ways, rough, tortuous, uncertain foot trails. To traverse 
them was an art; to lose them, suffering and even death. 

In such conditions the site which Oswego occupied 
had its extraordinary advantages. From it the water 
went everywhere — the broad lake, the full running 
river. These were her talismen. The streams, the 
lakes, the rivers — these were the open, the unhindered 
pathways of that distant time. The canoe of the red 
man, the batteau of the voyager, the shallop of the 
European, from camp to camp, from post to post, voy- 
aged over them, penetrating the fastnesses of forest and 
swamp where foot could scarcely find a way, skirting 



the shores of the great inland seas away toward the set- 
ting sun. No situation on the continent surpassed 
Oswego in that day for facilities in this communication. 
Far from the fringe of Atlantic settlements, deep in the 
endless woods, all roads led to her. 

Toward the west stretched the blue Ontario, as fresh, 
as fair, as tickle as to-day, drawing her waters from the 
waters of half a continent, from Erie, Huron, Michigan, 
Superior, from their myriad attendant lakes and streams, 
netting those limitless lands in silver meshes. OH" there 
were the Wyandotfs, the Ottawas, the Nippissings. 
Well knew they Oswego, the English market for pel- 
tries and skins. 

From the south ran the strong, the rapid Oswego, 
our familiar, beautiful stream, pouring with unceas- 
ing flow the waters of those many limpid lakes that 
in the basin of New York catch from surrounding slopes 
and hills the countless rills and brooks. There was the 
land of the Iroquois, the Six Nations, "the Romans of 
the new world," most knowing, most ambitious, most 
courted, most feared of the whites. The Indian, the 
trader, the missionary, the pioneer, the soldier, with few 
carries, passed with ample w r ater south and westward 
for two hundred miles. South and eastward, the Mo- 
hawk, close at hand, hurried down its lovely valley their 
frail barks to Albany, the Hudson, and the sea. That 
way, first the enterprising Dutch and thou the masterful 
English, in 16G4, were in possession. 

To the north and east, across the lake, opened the St. 
Lawrence, that majestic river of the world, bearing on 
its bosom a thousand islands, tumbling its waters along 
the rapids, sweeping them by the ancient settlements of 



8 

Montreal and Quebec, and pouring them far away into 
the broad arm of the Atlantic. There were the French. 
The pen falters that approaches the theme of the French 
in Canada. What a story! So many heroic lives; so 
many saints and martyrs of the Church! Such soldiers, 
such pioneers, leaving the courts and halls of Paris and 
Versailles to perish from famine, the winter, and the flood, 
living with savages and dying without friends! The 
India of the East could furnish no more to the imagin- 
ation of Burke himself than could this India of the West. 

Such was the situation of Oswego; such the territory 
that ministered to its importance. 

The name is Indian — Oshwakee, Oswago, meaning 
" The flowing out of the waters." With the French it 
was Chouaguen. 

It was inevitable that the " pioneers of New France" 
who followed Cartier along the great pathway of the St. 
Lawrence, pushing westward, should almost in the 
beginning come to this locality. As early as 1615, Sam- 
uel de Champlain, who of all that brilliant company of 
French crusaders left the most enduring mark, passed 
directly through or very near to it. Tiring of the inac- 
tivity of Quebec as he had tired of Paris before, he was 
engaging his dauntless spirit in a second expedition 
against the Iroquois. This was five years before the 
Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, and but six years after 
Hendrick Hudson discovered the river that bears his 
name. 

With the peace that followed Champlain's unsuc- 
cessful war upon the Indians, came followers of the 
cross — brethren of the order of Ignatius Loyola. In 1653 
Father Joseph Poncet, and in 1655 Father Pierre Chau- 



mont passed through Oswego from Montreal on missions 
to the Onondagas, chief nation of the six. The wilder- 
ness of the new world provoked no fears in their hearts 
equal to their fears for the unconverted. In the spring 
of 1655, Father Claude Dablon, with three other Jesuit 
fathers and a company of fifty Frenchmen under Sieur 
Dupuis, lingered at Oswego on their way to make 
a settlement with the same people. In two years the 
settlement failed, and all returned the same way to 
Montreal. 

From 1690 to 1696, Count de Frontenac, the vigor- 
ous Governor of Canada, founder of Kingston, making 
Oswego his base of operations, dispatched expeditions 
against the Iroquois to drive them from alliance with 
the English and into alliance with himself. In July of 
the latter year, old man that he was, he appeared at 
Oswego with a veritable army of Canadians and Indians, 
having cannon, mortars, and grenades, and journeying up 
the rapid river against the Onondagas, found their 
villages deserted. Some chroniclers relate that on this 
expedition Frontenac erected at Oswego a stockade. If 
so, this was the earliest fortification here. 

And now to the west and north the Dutch and 
English traders in fur from Albany and the east pressed 
their way among the Indians. Oswego lay on a straight 
road toward home. Soon the red men anticipated at 
Oswego the coming of the white, and there, in 1722, 
William Burnet, Provincial Governor of New York, 
hardly less distinguished as the son of the celebrated 
prelate, author of "Burnet's History of His Own Times," 
built a trading-house. The following year fifty-seven 
canoes went from Oswego to Albany with seven hundred 
and thirty-eight packs of beaver and deer skins. 



10 

The French post at Niagara and the later one at 
Toronto in vain essayed to intercept this trade. The 
Abbe Piquet, a Jesuit priest and chronicler, writes in 
his diary: "Oswego not only spoils our trade, but 
puts the English into communication with a vast num- 
ber of our Indians, far and near. It is true that they 
like our brandy better than English rum; but they 
prefer English goods to ours, and can buy for two 
beaver-skins at Oswego a better silver bracelet than 
we sell at Niagara for ten." Oswego owed this advan- 
tage of five beaver-skins to one largely to her place on 
the map. 

In the spring of 1727, Governor Burnet erected on 
the west side of the river, toward its mouth, on what is 
now the intersection of VanBuren and First streets, a 
masonry redoubt, loopholed for musketry, to protect his 
trading-post. It was sixty feet by thirty, and forty feet 
high. This was Fort Oswego, or "Oswego Old Fort," as 
it was afterwards described. The French called it Fort 
Chouaguen, and later Fort Pepperell. In 1741, the Pro- 
vincial Assembly voted six hundred pounds to build a 
wall about it "with a bastion in each corner to flank the 
curtains." John Bartram, a Pennsylvania traveler, thus 
describes it in 1743: "On the point formed by the 
entrance of the river stands the fort or trading castle; 
it is a strong, stone house, encompassed with a stone 
wall near twenty feet high, and one hundred and twenty 
paces round, built of large, square stones, very curious 
for their softness. I cut my name in it with my knife. 
The town consisted of seventy log houses, of which one- 
half are in a row near the river, the other half opposite 
to them." 



11 

The Marquis de Beauharnois, Governor-General of 
Canada, immediately demanded its evacuation, declaring 
it to be a manifest breach of the treaty of Utrecht. 
The diplomatic Burnet got the question referred to 
London and Versailles, and nothing came of it. 

Hitherto the conflicts between the French and Eng- 
lish in America were faint echoes of their continental 
strife. But in the final struggle now impending the 
rival colonies were chief figures. The treaty of Aix la 
Chapelle in 1748 was a weak compact in essential par- 
ticulars. It lasted not so long as either the peace of 
Ryswick in 1697 or the peace of Utrecht in 1713. 

Says a modern writer: "It is customary in the 
United States to regard Wolfe's victory at Quebec as 
the solstice in the ecliptic of modern history, since it se- 
cured America for English institutions, and American 
civilization is to dominate the world." Says Parkman : 
"It supplied to the United States the indispensable con- 
dition of their greatness, if not of their national ex- 
istence." 

This view of the French and Indian war discloses 
Oswego upon a height of historical prominence not gen- 
erally appreciated. Its figure in this great struggle 
towered among the highest. 

In a letter to the Provincial Assembly in 1740, Gov- 
ernor Clark, of New York, writes that Oswego was the 
only English military post on the northwestern frontier, 
and if captured, nothing prevented the French from 
holding all the lands from Canada to Georgia. "The 
peace and happiness of the plantations and the trade 
of England, if not the very being of His Majesty's 
dominion on this continent, depend on the holding of 



12 

Oswego," he says. Governor Clinton wrote to his 
Assembly in 1744 that it was "the key for the commerce 
between the colonies and the inland nations of Indians." 
The possession of Oswego by the English was a thorn 
in the side of the French. SaysParkman: " No Eng- 
lish establishment on the continent was of such ill omen 
to the French." To them it was the hated Chouaguen. 

Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, first commander- 
in-chief of the British forces in America, and a man of 
great energy, regarded Oswego as more important than 
any post, and to it he first gave his attention. By his 
orders Colonel Mercer constructed, in October, 1755, 
Fort Ontario, very nearly, if not precisely, on the site of 
the fort where we now are. It was a substantial fortifi- 
cation, one hundred and eighty feet on each side, built 
of pickets eighteen inches in diameter, rising nine feet 
from the ground, and surrounded by a ditch eighteen 
feet wide by eight feet deep. It appears to have been a 
"starred fort." A third and inferior fortification, known 
as "Oswego New Fort," or "Fort George," he also 
erected on the high ground of the west bank, on what is 
now the southwest corner of Van Buren and Seventh 
streets, and where is now the residence of Hon. Edwin 
Allen. It was one hundred and seventy feet on each 
side, with ramparts of earth and stone twenty feet 
thick and twelve feet high, encompassed with a ditch 
fourteen feet broad and ten feet deep. 

The French and Indian war was formally declared in 
May, 1756. On July 3d of that year the command of 
Colonel Bradstreet, returning to Albany from Oswego, 
where he had been with stores and reinforcements for 
the garrison, was waylaid above Minetto by French and 



13 

Indians under DeVilliers. Bradstreet withdrew his men, 
about two hundred and fifty in number, to Battle Island, 
repulsed the enemy after a sanguinary fight, and cross- 
ing to the mainland, finally put them to flight, 

In August of the same year, the Marquis de Mont- 
calm, commander of the French troops in America, and 
hero of many continental engagements, was before 
Oswego with a force variously stated at from three 
thousand to five thousand men. There is in the posses- 
sion of the library of the city the original map of Oswego, 
made by an engineer of this expedition, Chevalier 
Chaussegros de Lery, and used by the French in their 
attack. It discloses, in addition to the fortifications 
already mentioned, a fourth, in the nature of a lunette or 
small outwork, situated apparently near the intersection 
of the present West First and Schuyler streets. 

But few details of the conquest of Oswego by 
the French can be given here. The English force 
of about eighteen hundred men was divided between 
Fort Ontario, in command of Colonel Littlehales; Fort 
Oswego, in command of Colonel Mercer, and Fort 
George, in command of Colonel Schuyler. The French 
approached from their landing-place, about three miles 
east, and invested Fort Ontario. After delivering a 
somewhat brisk fire from the fort, the English with- 
drew across the river to Fort Oswego. The French, 
occupying Fort Ontario, turned their batteries upon 
Fort Oswego and Fort George upon the hill. Twenty- 
five hundred Canadians and Indians crossed the river 
and attacked from the land side. On August 14, 1756, 
the remaining fortifications capitulated, after Colonel 
Mercer had been killed. Fifteen hundred men were 



14 

captured, Shirley's and Pepperell's regiments, veterans of 
Fotenoy, and, in addition, seven vessels of war, one 
hundred and thirty-nine guns, and large stores of 
ammunition and provisions. Among the English cap- 
tives was Francis Lewis, afterwards a signer of the 
Declaration of Independence. The forts were demol- 
ished. The zealous Abbe Piquet erected over the ruins 
of this fort a cross, on which appeared the words " In 
hoc signo vincunV Near by he raised a staff bearing the 
arms of France, and wrote beneath the words "Manibus 
date lilia plenis" The captured flags were carried in 
triumph through the streets of Montreal and Quebec, and 
hung like votive offerings in their cathedrals. 

The loss of Oswego was regarded in England as a 
national misfortune. Pitt, the Great Commoner, taunted 
the ministry with it from the opposition benches. The fall 
of Henry Fox and the accession of Pitt to power were 
doubtless partially precipitated by it. Horace Walpole, 
the most famous letter writer in English literature, writes 
to Horace Mann from Arlington street, under date of No- 
vember 4, 1756, as follows: "Minorca is gone; Oswego 
is gone; the nation is in a ferment; Oswego, often times 
more importance than Minorca, is annihilated." Let it 
be recalled that Minorca was the strongest place in Eu- 
rope after Gibraltar. November 15 he writes: "The 
massacre at Oswego happily proves a romance; part of 
the two regiments that were made prisoners are actually 
arrived at Plymouth, Quebec being too scanty to admit 
additional numbers." 

In 1758, Louis XV. struck a medal to commemorate 
the victories of France. On the obverse appears his bust, 
entitled "Imperator Orbis" the Ruler of the World; on 



15 

the reverse appear the following names: " Wesel, Oswego, 
Port Malion, St David" Port Malum, on Minorca, was 
the most important fortress in the Mediterranean, cap- 
tured by the French in 1756; St. David, the strongest 
fort in India, taken by Count Lally in 1757; Wesel, the 
fortified town of the French on the lower Rhine, success- 
fully held against siege, and Oswego, the most valued 
position in North America, captured by Montcalm in 1756. 
These were the tokens of the title of the world-conquer- 
ing Louis. One of these medals is the property of Mr. 
Theodore Irwin, of this city. 

With Pitt as Prime Minister, English affairs in North 
America took a turn. 

The forts being demolished, Oswego was suffered by 
the French to slip back to the English. In August, 
1758, General Bradstreet, with Major-General Schuyler 
and three thousand men, crossed from Oswego in bat- 
teaux, whaleboats, and a small schooner, and took Fort 
Frontenac, now Kingston, from the French — a disheart- 
ening loss. July 1, 1759, General Prideaux, with two 
thousand regulars, and Sir William Johnson, with one 
thousand Indians from his seat on the Mohawk, proceed- 
ing from Oswego, captured Fort Niagara after a long 
siege. While they were gone the Chevalier de la Corne 
attempted in vain to retake Oswego, then guarded by 
six hundred provincials under General Haldimand. 

September 18, 1759, Quebec fell, and Wolfe and 
Montcalm gained immortality. In that year Fort On- 
tario was rebuilt, and became the base of operations 
against Montreal, the seat of the French Empire in 
Canada. August 10, 1760, Lord Amherst, with ten 
thousand men and thirteen hundred Indians, embarked 



16 

from Oswego against Montreal. The spectacle of this 
great army of red-coats and Indians, at that time one of 
the largest ever assembled on the continent, can better 
be imagined than described. With the surrender of 
Montreal on the 8th of September, the Seven Years' 
War in America, regarded as a great crisis in its history, 
was at an end. The peace of Paris, nearly three years 
later, left little to France east of the Mississippi but a 
share in the fisheries of Newfoundland and the St. 
Lawrence. 

After the peace the post of Oswego was garrisoned 
by the Fifty-fifth Infantry, a Scotch regiment from Ster- 
ling, under command of Major Alexander Duncan. The 
daughter of one of his captains was Annie McVicar, who 
became Mrs. Grant, the authoress of the " Memoirs of 
an American Lady," published in London in 1808, justly 
celebrated sketches of maimers and scenery in America 
as they existed prior to the Revolution. She tells us 
that in 1760 in the hollow south of this fort there was 
a fine garden, which "throve beyond belief or example," 
and also a bowling green and fish pond. 

This, also, was about the time and this the place in 
which Cooper laid the scene of his renowned romance of 
Mabel, Jasper, and the Pathfinder. 

In the summer of 1766, Pontiac, the great Ottawa 
chieftain, who had captured all but three of the West- 
ern posts, and for years defied his enemies, at length 
submitting, journeyed to a great council fire at Oswego 
from his seat in the West, to meet the English and the 
Iroquois, with Sir William Johnson at their head. The 
pipe of peace passed around, and Pontiac and his dusky 
followers voyaged homeward On the lake, each with a 



17 

medal bearing this inscription: "A pledge of peace and 
friendship with Great Britain, confirmed in 1766." 

Thereafter trade, the ward of peace, was left to in- 
crease and multiply at Oswego. 

The center of the storm known as the French and 
Indian War passed over this locality; the center of the 
greater conflict of the Revolution, now at hand, lay to 
the south and east. The limits imposed by time and 
the occasion allow of no excursion into the history of 
that war. Oswego's part in it was, by comparison, in- 
considerable. She stood like a sentinel on the outskirts 
of the battle. The war's alarms sounded faintly on her 
ears. Seldom was she drafted into active service. 

The British made haste to range the savages of the 
land on their side. The baronial family of the Johnsons 
on the Mohawk, sons of the famous Sir William, were 
the chief emissaries for this purpose. Twice did they, 
with Joseph Brant and the execrated Butler, organize 
grand councils of the red men at Oswego to win them 
over. On July 27, 1777, Colonel Barry St. Leger, with 
Canadians and Indians, whose purpose was to co-operate 
with the army of Burgoyne from the north tor an invasion 
of the Valley of the Mohawk, set forth from Oswego. Up 
the river moved this army of two thousand white men 
and Indians. They besieged Fort Schuyler, on the Great 
Carry, between Wood's Creek and the Mohawk, where 
the waters flow one way to the lakes and the oilier to the 
sea, and on August 6th fought with the provincials one of 
the bloodiest battles of the war — Oriskany. There the 
valiant Herkimer, wounded and dying, withstood the foe. 
At length the relief of Arnold, raising the siege of the 
fort, turned the overwhelming tide and rescued Central 



18 

New York. The defeated English hastened to Oswego, 
and there scattered, some to Montreal, some to Niagara. 
Fort Ontario was left unoccupied. In July, 1778, Ameri- 
cans under Lieutenant McClelland destroyed it to prevent, 
as- far as possible, its reoccupation. In the eyes of the 
Indian allies of the English, the vision of Oswego, the 
time-honored Chouaguen, laid low, was ominous. They 
besought the English to restore it, but in vain, and, as 
report goes, it was not until some time between 1780 and 
1782 that Fort Ontario was partly raised from its ruins 
and supplied with a garrison of British soldiers. 

Almost the last, if not the last, military movement of 
the Revolution was directed against Fort Ontario. Con- 
scious of its importance to the British in their relations 
with the Indians, Washington at Newburgh directed 
Colonel Willett with a small force to surprise and cap- 
ture Fort Ontario. This was as late as January, 
1783, the news of the signing of the treaty not yet 
being received. Willett reached the fort, but his ex- 
pedition was unsuccessful, owing to the severity of the 
cold and snow, and his failure to surprise the garrison. 

Thus it has been attempted to outline the important 
part played by Oswego in the great drama of the 
continent. It fell to her because of her location; by 
reason of that it was as inevitable as are any human 
events. Thereafter, until the war of 1812, she was a 
passive quantity in the controversies and parleys that 
arose over the terms of peace of 1783, to finally subside 
in the evacuation by the British in 1796 which we are 
here to celebrate. 

And now to the proximate causes of this day. The 
scene is shifted to Paris and Versailles. There were 



19 

the captivating, the wise Franklin, the sturdy Adams, and 
the astute Jay, waging the diplomatic battles of their 
country against the reluctant commissioners of Great 
Britain. The negotiations which resulted in the definite 
treaty of peace, September 3, 1783, are declared by 
high authority to have been " one of the most brilliant 
triumphs of the whole history of modern diplomacy." 
Certain it is that the opposition to the terms of it in 
Parliament turned Lord Shelburne out of office. In the 
item of transcendant importance — namely, territory — the 
success of the American commissioners was beyond all 
expectation. " The boundaries must have caused aston- 
ishment in America," wrote De Vergennes, the French 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Luzerne, the representa- 
tive of France in America. And so they did. Against 
the secret eiforts of France herself to prevent, the 
American triumvirate pushed the boundaries of the 
new nation over the Alleghanies as far as the Missis- 
sippi, secured the priceless right to navigate that river, 
to fish on the Newfoundland banks, and to an opening to 
the Pacific. Chief credit for this exploit is commonly 
given to Jay, and yet Franklin's tact and Adams' bold- 
ness were indispensable. 

There were, however, other provisions of this famous 
convention with which we to-day have especially to do. 
They were the adjustment of troubles deeply vexing the 
two countries, touching keenly the sensibilities of their 
peoples. The treaty provided that private debts on each 
side should be paid, and that Congress should recom- 
mend the state legislatures to restore estates confiscated 
from British citizens and their American sympathizers. 
The debts referred to were for the most part obligations 



20 

incurred to English merchants by American merchants 
for goods sold prior to the commencement of the war. 

The seventh article of the treaty was as follows: 
"His Britannic Majesty shall with all convenient speed, 
and without causing any destruction and without carry- 
ing away any negroes or other property of the American 
inhabitants, withdraw all his armies, garrisons and fleets 
from the said United States, and from any port, harbor 
or place within the same." The requirements of this 
article were not fulfilled. British troops sailed from 
New York taking negroes with them, and when Baron 
Steuben, on behalf of the Americans, proceeded to assert 
formal possession of the military posts on the northern 
frontier, it was denied him. No orders had been re- 
ceived, said General Haldimand, to evacuate, but only 
to cease hostilities. For thirteen years soldiers of the 
foreign power mounted guard, flew their country's ensign, 
and fired the evening gun over Fort Ontario and the 
frontier posts. This spectacle was a constant irritation. 
Nor was its effect merely sentimental. British officers 
levied duties on American boats passing Oswego. Trad- 
ers and boatmen were in a ferment. They vented their 
wrath by seizing batteaux of goods in charge of the 
Johnsons, the ancient allies of the British, at Three Riv- 
ers, on the Oswego. 

England's retention of the northern posts cost Ameri- 
can fur-traders dear. A list of furs advertised at London 
for the spring sales of 1787, as stated in the American 
Museum, contained over three hundred and sixty thou- 
sand skins, which were valued at two hundred and 
twenty-five thousand pounds. These figures convey 
some notion of the trade largely diverted from American 
traders at Oswego, Albany and New York. 



21 

But it is not to be understood that Great Britain 
willfully continued her possession of the posts. In 
November, 17 ( «>2, Jefferson, then Secretary of State, 
formally opened the subject of the violation of the 
seventh article of the treaty by the retention of the posts, 
with Hammond, the English envoy to this country. The 
explanation came quickly that the King-, his master, had 
suspended that article because of the failure of Congress 
to prevent the hindrance of British creditors in collect- 
ing their debts, and because estates confiscated from the 
Tories had not been restored. The charge was true. 
Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and 
South Carolina had every one enacted statutes blocking 
the machinery of the law against English creditors. To 
the other charge of failure to restore the confiscated 
Tory estates, Jefferson replied that the only engagement 
had been to recommend a restoration of the estates, not 
to restore them. The claim was made at the time that 
English handlers of the profitable fur trade influenced the 
British ministry to delay a settlement whilst they were 
enjoying what was naturally the business of Americans. 
It was also charged that the well known feebleness of the 
infant nation to enforce reprisals contented England with 
the situation in which things were. Still another cause 
assigned was the purpose of the British to compel the 
alliance of the Indians through the threat implied in 
the possession of the frontier posts. 

These and other poignant hostilities established a 
high tension between the countries. On April 21, 
1794, the Republicans in Congress moved to suspend 
all commercial intercourse with Great Britain until the 
frontier posts were given up. The people, loaded with 



22 

debt, and otherwise never so poorly prepared for war, 
still clamored for its declaration. But now he who so 
often before had stilled the tempest, disclosed his calm 
and majestic personality for the salvation of his country. 
Oblivious of the storm of popular disapproval, Washing- 
ton wrote to the Senate: " But as peace ought to be 
preserved with unremitted zeal before the last recourse, 
which has so often been the scourge of nations, and can- 
not fail to check the advancing prosperity of the United 
States, is contemplated, I have thought proper to nomi- 
nate and I do hereby nominate John Jay as envoy ex- 
traordinary of the United States to His Britannic Maj- 
esty." 

The faithful servant who a decade before had obtained 
peace with so much honor for his country, was again 
enlisted to preserve it. Well did he know the unpopu- 
larity of his mission. He writes: " If Washington sees 
fit to call me to this service I will go and perform it, fore- 
seeing as I do the consequence to my personal popularity. 
The good of my country I believe demands the sacrifice, 
and I am ready to make it." 

He sailed on the 12th of May, 1794. While he was 
upon the sea, affairs at home were rapidly approaching 
war. Three companies of a British regiment invaded 
what is now Northern Ohio to establish Fort Miami 
there, and in a message to Congress Washington suggests 
the propriety of preparing for the dread event. But the 
celebrated treaty known by the name of its negotiator, 
signed in London on the 19th of November, 1794, averted 
a catastrophe. By its terms the United States under- 
took to compensate British creditors. British troops 
were to withdraw from all territories of the United 



23 

States on June 1, 1796. Compensation for retention of 
the posts was omitted on the ground that the United 
States had suffered several states to prevent the re- 
covery of debts owed to British creditors. 

The storm of popular disapproval which greeted this 
treaty was not less than Jay had anticipated. In Phila- 
delphia he was hung in effigy, and in New York Hamil- 
ton was stoned when he arose to speak in his defense. 
" Calumny," said the unruffled Jay, " is seldom durable; 
it will in time yield to truth." On June 24, 1795, the 
treaty was ratified by the Senate, and on August 15th 
Washington signed it. 

The delay in the withdrawal of the British forces 
from Fort Ontario after June 1st until the day, one hun- 
dred years ago, whose anniversary we celebrate, was not 
the fault of Great Britain. Washington in his last mes- 
sage to Congress assigned the reason for it. He writes 
that the period at which the appropriation was passed to 
carry into effect the treaty "necessarily procrastinated 
the reception of the posts stipulated to be delivered, 
beyond the date assigned for that exenV 1 The diplo- 
matic correspondence on the subject in the foreign office 
in London between the Duke of Portland, Great Brit- 
ain's Secretary of State, and Lord Dorchester, Governor- 
General of Canada, discloses the readiness on their part 
to comply with the terms of the treaty. They arranged 
to retain a guard for the security of the posts until the 
United States should be ready to occupy them. 

And so it transpired that in July, 1796, a hundred 
years ago, Fort Ontario, a cherished fortification, passed 
from the possession of a great power across the sea, and 
entered into the birthright of its own people. There 



24 

is slight record of the circumstances of the transfer. 
Like many significant events in history, it transpired in 
quietness and simplicity. No great display of arms, no 
strains of martial music, no concourse of people, no pres- 
ence of distinguished men and women, then honored that 
great day as now it is honored. 

One eye witness of the event says that the British 
garrison marched out and gave possession to the Amer- 
ican troops, who marched in with their field-pieces, 
planted the standard of the United States on the ram- 
parts of the tort, and fired a salute of fifteen cannon. He 
further declares that the British officers behaved with 
great politeness. 

Another witness, Mr. F. Elmer, an American officer, 
writing to Mr. George Scriba, says that the American 
flag under a federal salute was for the first time dis- 
played from the citadel of the fort at the hour of ten in 
the morning. Captain Clark and Colonel Fothergill 
were His Majesty's officers, left with a detachment of 
thirty men for the protection of the works. " From 
these gentlemen," he says, " the greatest politeness and 
civility was displayed to us in adjusting the transfer, 
the buildings and gardens being left in the neatest order." 

These are the simple annals of the evacuation of Fort 
Ontario by the British. Thus ended England's sover- 
eignty over territory of the United States. 

Time forbids and the occasion does not require the 
later history of this time-honored fort. It must suffice 
to say that for some time prior to the war of 1812 Fort 
Ontario was unoccupied. During that war, on May 5, 
1814, a British fleet of eight vessels from Kingston, 
carrying two hundred and twenty guns and three thou- 



25 

sand men, under Sir James Yeo, appeared before Oswego 
and bombarded it, It was defended by Colonel Mitchell, 
who had been dispatched from Sackett's Harbor with 
three hundred men. Under protection of the ships' 
guns, the British troops were landed, and on May 6, after 
a vigorous resistance, the command in Fort Ontario sur- 
rendered. The British threw down the fortifications and 
abandoned the place. Thus it lay until in 1839 Con- 
gress voted a sum for its restoration. The timber work 
and the houses you see about you are of that date. 
Since then it has been continuously garrisoned until two 
years ago, when the authorities at Washington saw fit to 
abandon this historic and strategic fort. 

And now we would depart the scene and this occa- 
sion with sentiments of welcome and friendship fir our 
kinsmen of Great Britain across the lake and across the 
sea. 

We celebrate here to-day no victories. The occasion 
does not invite nor does our disposition so incline us. 
We celebrate rather the final coming into his estate of 
the rightful heir. The just Washington, in his last mes- 
sage to Congress, December 7, 1796, writes that as 
soon as the Governor-General of Canada could be ad- 
dressed with propriety on the subject, arrangements 
were cordially and promptly concluded by Great Britain 
for the evacuation of the posts. Eye witnesses of the 
event we celebrate declare that it was conducted by the 
British with the greatest politeness and civility. This 
cordiality, this courtesy, may we be permitted on this 
occasion to acknowledge and to reciprocate. If courtesy 
be the flower of peace, then with the flowers of peace 
we, too, would decorate this day as they did decorate 



26 

the day a hundred years ago. Peace has been in our time. 
In our time may it not be marred. 

It has been said that the destiny of the race is in the 
custody of the English-speaking people. Together, then, 
let them bear onward toward " the universal pacification 
of mankind." 



km* • ~ . 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 224 297 7 * 




ft 



L« 









